Will a Robot Take Your Job? Or Provide a New One?

MARK MURO and SCOTT ANDES: The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the global economic benefits of advanced robotics in manufacturing—to be realized through massive productivity and quality gains—could reach $1.2 trillion by 2025. That’s a huge gain to the world’s welfare but it comes with some disquiet. It implies that automation is threatening the existence of more manufacturing occupations much faster than might have been anticipated just a few years ago.

The range of what can be automated is widening rapidly. The first robotics revolution—ushered by General Motors in the 1960s with robotic arms that stacked hot die-cast metal pieces—substituted capital for labor in the most dangerous, difficult and labor-intensive tasks. Today, we’re in the midst of a second robotics revolution. Thanks to the new field of “machine learning,” second-generation robots no longer require step-by-step commands by a human. Workers with highly routinized tasks—such as industrial painters, machine setters, laminators, fabricators—are most at risk of replacement. Yet workers with “middle” skills—those with mechanical, electrical or industrial credentials as well as social perceptiveness and supervisory ability—complement automation and continue to be in high demand.

What is coming now, though, is a much more disruptive third era of industrial automation. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, machine vision, sensors, “big data” analytics, motors, and hydraulics robots are becoming increasingly dexterous smart, and autonomous—not to mention cheap. Coming fast are robots that can take on more delicate tasks, such as intricate electronics assembly, and work more easily for and with their human tenders. As a result, various machine operators, precision solderers, and electronic equipment assemblers are all now at risk of replacement. All told, McKinsey estimates robots will replace 15% to 25% of industrial-worker tasks within a decade. Clearly the coming wave of automation will further reduce America’s manufacturing employment per unit of output.

And yet, there could be benefits. For one, the ability of robots to drive costs down could encourage global companies to move some production back to the U.S., creating jobs. Otherwise, for some there will be job opportunities in minding, maintaining or improving the bots. On that score, an increasingly heard word of career advice will be: “robotics!”

Mark Muro (@markmuro1) is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the policy director of the Metropolitan Policy Program there. Scott Andes is a senior policy analyst at the Brookings Institution.